Review: Sharp Dynabook Portege Z40L-N
This is the second of two Sharp Dynabook laptops that I am reviewing this week. You can read about the firstSharp Dynabook that I reviewed here. And that was a light and reasonably quick laptop. Today I have something that is lighter than that one and faster in a lot of ways. It’s the Portege Z40L-N and it clocks in at a mere 2.11 pounds which is insanely light. In fact, if I needed a notebook to carry on the daily, this would likely be my choice.
But just because it’s light doesn’t mean that you give up anything. I’m going to start with performance based on the following specs:
- Intel Core Ultra 7 Processor 258V
- Windows 11 Pro
- 14.0″ diagonal widescreen
- 32 GB RAM
- 512 GB PCIe NVMe SSD
- Fingerprint reader
- 2 x USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports
- Intel ARC Graphics
- WiFi 7, Bluetooth, Ethernet
- 56 W battery
First let’s start with the CPU and GPU performance. I did my testing using Geekbench 6 and I did one test on battery and one test on AC power as PC laptops can have radically different results in each scenario. Here’s the results:
On battery:
- Single Core: 2144
- Multi Core: 9292
- GPU (OpenCL): 26777
And here’s the results while on AC Power:
- Single Core: 2544
- Multi Core: 9784
- GPU (OpenCL): 24840
To put that in perspective, my M1 Pro MacBook Pro hit these numbers (both on battery and on AC power) for the CPU:
- Single Core: 1762
- Multi Core: 12431
So despite being a small and thin laptop, it put out pretty impressive numbers. And I had to run the GPU test three times to validate the numbers as it was odd that it had a higher score on battery versus on AC power. But the results came out the same every time so I have to assume that this is a legitimate score.
Now onto the disk test. Here’s the results on both AC and battery power:
- Read: 3420.61 MB/s
- Write: 2319.43 MB/s
So it’s not the fastest SSD around as my MacBook Pro posted up a score of over 5000 MB/s in both read and write tests. But it’s far from slow.
You also aren’t giving up anything in terms of ports:
The screen itself is very bright and vibrant. Though it does have issues with really bright reflections such as a camera flash. I won’t hold that against Sharp. The keyboard has a nice typing feel to it as well. I wasn’t a fan of the trackpad as using a MacBook Pro as my daily driver, I found getting used to a mechanical trackpad to be a problem as it is a mechanical diving board trackpad. But that’s a me problem. I am pretty sure it will not be a you problem.
On the left side, you get a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port for power and data, an HDMI port, a USB-A port, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot.
On the right side you get a USB-A port, a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port and an Ethernet jack along with an Kensington lock slot.
In short, This notebook is fully featured and missing nothing. Except maybe for battery life. It’s rated for “up to” 8 hours. I barely got past 5 hours. Your mileage may vary on that front. But given the overall package that’s on offer here, I will give Sharp a free pass on that one. You can pick one up for about $2600. And in my opinion, if you want a light laptop that doesn’t force you to give up on speed or connectivity, it would be money well spent.
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